Library Weblog & News

2nd Annual Local Authors Book Talk Featuring Sarah Willis

Tuesday, April 24, 2007 3:00 p.m. - 4:30 p.m. Cleveland State University Library2121 Euclid Avenue Rhodes Tower, room 503 Free and open to the public Sponsored by the Friends of the Library

Critically-acclaimed author Sarah Willis will discuss her novels, Some Things that Stay, The Rehearsal, A Good Distance, and The Sound of Us. Ms. Willis will also do a book signing after the program. All four of her books will be available for purchase directly outside of RT 503 before and after her presentation. Her books are also on sale at the CSU Bookstore and available for check out at the CSU Library.

Sarah Willis' first novel, Some Things that Stay, was listed as a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, won the Stephen Crane Award for First Fiction 2000, and was awarded The Cleveland Arts Prize in Literature 2000. Some Things that Stay was made into a movie which opened in Canada in October, 2004. Joanna Scott, of The New York Times writes, "Convincing . . . memorable . . . It would be easy to describe Sarah Willis's first novel as quiet, but I'm more inclined to call Some Things that Stay quietly defiant . . . Willis has created a feisty narrator-15-year-old Tamara Anderson, who asks herself tough questions about life and refuses to accept even the most serviceable answers."

Her second novel is The Rehearsal, an engaging drama about an egomaniacal director who has become dangerously out of touch with his family. The New York Times Book Review calls A Good Distance "an artfully defiant work of fiction that stubbornly hews to the unruliness of life..." and The Sound of Us gracefully explores the world of foster care through the eyes of 48-year-old Alice Marlowe, an interpreter for the deaf living a lonely life in Cleveland. Sarah also writes essays which can be found in the Plain Dealer Sunday Magazine. She is busy now writing her fifth novel.

Sarah has taught creative writing classes at numerous writer's workshops and colleges, including Hiram college, John Carroll University, The Imagination Conference at CSU, The Columbus Writers Conference, The Writer's Center at Chautauqua, and the Maui Writer's Retreat. Sarah was born in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, where she still lives.

Refreshments will be served at event.

To reserve a seat or for more information, email b.florjancic@csuohio.edu or call 216-875-9734.